A Harvard physicist has revealed that up to 10 percent of fragments recovered from the Pacific Ocean contain “alien” elements not seen in our solar system.
Avi Loeb told DailyMail.com that he and his team completed their analysis of 850 spherules and found a new class of distinct elemental composition called BeLaU, and “not coal ash, as some people claim.”
The composition included beryllium, lanthanum and uranium, which are found on Earth, but they were arranged in patterns that do not match alloys on our planet.
“We studied more than a dozen BeLaU spherules and showed that, based on the abundance of 55 elements in the periodic table, they are clearly differentiated from coal fly ash,” Loeb said.
“This excludes, without a reasonable doubt, the interpretation of the coal ash suggested by four people.”
A Harvard physicist has revealed that up to 10 percent of fragments recovered from the Pacific Ocean contain ‘alien’ elements not seen in our solar system
The team’s findings now claim that the IM1 meteor detected shooting across the skies in 2014 was Earth’s first interstellar visitor.
The latest article by the Harvard physicist, published in January, breaks down the classification of spherules.
Loeb told DailyMail.com that the samples were studied by three laboratories: the University of California, Berkeley, Bruker Corporation and Harvard University.
The samples were subdivided into three types of composition: silicate-rich spherules or type S, Ferich (Fe) spherules or type I and vitreous spherules or type G.
About 78 percent fall into type S, G, and I spherules.
Another group was labeled “differentiated,” and was found to have more silicon (Si) and magnesium (Mg), along with higher proportions of aluminum (Ai) and Si.
«That is why these spherules are called differentiated, which means that they probably derive from rocks in the Earth’s crust of a differentiated planet; “We call them type D spherules, characterized by Mg/Si,” the study reads.
Avi Loeb told DailyMail.com that he and his team completed their analysis of 850 spherules and found a new class of distinct elemental composition called BeLaU, and “not coal ash, as some people claim.”
The samples were subdivided into three composition types: silicate-rich or S-type spherules, Ferich (Fe) or type I spherules, and vitreous or G-type spherules. Another group was labeled “differentiated,” and was found to have more silicon. (Si) and magnesium (Mg), along with higher proportions of aluminum (Ai) and Si.
Another group was labeled “differentiated,” and was found to have more silicon (Si) and magnesium (Mg), along with higher proportions of aluminum (Ai) and Si.
And about 22 percent of the 850 spherules were labeled as differentiated.
The team used a different method to identify spherules with Be, La and U enrichment.
This procedure identifies 10 of the type D spherules as BeLaU with low Si spherules and two as BeLaU with high Si spherules.
Loeb explained that it is clear that the fragments are formed from material that separated from a rock-like object, but the chemical composition is different from any known material in the solar system, with a component of the lunar crust closest.
The composition (pictured) included beryllium, lanthanum and uranium, which are found on Earth, but were arranged in patterns that do not match alloys on our planet.
The remains come from a meter-sized object that crashed off the coast of Papua, New Guinea, in 2014 and which Professor Loeb said was an extraterrestrial spacecraft.
“The elemental composition of the BeLaU spherules has never been reported in the scientific literature and is different from the familiar spherules of known solar system meteors,” Loeb told DailyMail.com.
«The abundance pattern does not resemble the natural materials of the Earth, the Moon, Mars or the asteroids of the solar system and presents increased abundances of some elements by up to a factor of a thousand in relation to the initial composition of the materials of the system solar. We interpret it as something external to the solar system.
“It constitutes the first recognized interstellar meteor, IM1.”
Avi shared the initial findings in October after analyzing just 57 fragments, stating that the samples contained the new BeLaU patterns, along with a low content of elements with high affinity for iron, such as rhenium.
However, the claim was met with criticism from other members of the scientific community, with one saying there was a lack of “conclusive evidence.”
Patricio A. Gallardo, a physicist at the University of Chicago, published a counterstudy last November.
‘The meteoritic origin is in question,’ Gallardo shared in his article published in AAS Research Notes.
“Few comparisons have been made with contaminants to rule out the null hypothesis of terrestrial contamination.”
Gallardo also stated that there was a coherence between these three elements (as well as nickel) with the beryllium, lanthanum, uranium and nickel that arise in the ashes of burning coal.
Steve Desch and Alan Jackson of Arizona State University also shared their criticism last year, stating: ‘Far from being exotic particles from an extrasolar planet, the spherules collected and analyzed by Loeb et al. They appear to be similar to those found around the world, with an origin in the Solar System and compositions modified by tens of thousands of years of residence on the ocean floor.
A fourth person echoed Gallardo’s article by stating that the spherules are “carbon ash from human activity since the industrial revolution.”
The team’s findings now suggest that the IM1 meteor detected shooting across the skies in 2014 was Earth’s first interstellar visitor.
The discovery that these fragments of interstellar metal were dredged from the Pacific with powerful magnets led Loeb and his Galileo team to the 2023 mission.
“These four critics did not have access to the expedition materials and made loud statements to the scientific community, the public and the media without substantial evidence,” Loeb told DailyMail.com.
‘We now prove that your ‘coal ash’ claim is invalid based on a detailed analysis of 55 elements from the periodic table. His claim about ‘coal ashes’ was misinformation.’
For years, Loeb has maintained that Earth could have been visited by such technology.
In 2017, an interstellar object called Oumuamua passed through the solar system, and although most scientists believe it was a natural phenomenon, Loeb argued that it could have been of extraterrestrial origin.
After Oumuamua’s discovery in 2017, Loeb theorized, despite much criticism, that more interstellar objects had likely passed by Earth.
It was vindicated in 2019 when Loeb and his team discovered that a high-speed fireball in 2014, the IM1 meteor, also had interstellar origins and predated Oumuamua.
In 2017, an interstellar object called Oumuamua passed through the solar system and, although most scientists believe it was a natural phenomenon, Loeb argued that it could have been of extraterrestrial origin.
Harvard scientists spent years working closely with the US military to identify the impact zone, reviewing data to determine if and when the object fell from space.
And determined that the object crashed off the coast of Papua New Guinea.
Air friction caused IM1 to burst into flames in the air as it hurtled towards Earth, leaving a trail of molten iron raindrops in its wake on January 8, 2014.
The discovery that these fragments of interstellar metal could be dredged from the Pacific with powerful magnets led Loeb and his Galileo team to the 2023 mission.
Last June, Loeb and his team traveled to a site where the IM1 meteor was believed to have crashed almost a decade ago.
Also known as CNEOS1 2014-01-08, the object had an estimated diameter of 1.5 feet, a mass of 1,014 pounds, and a pre-impact velocity of 37.3 miles per second.
IM1 withstood four times the pressure that would normally destroy an ordinary iron-metal meteor, as it hurtled through Earth’s atmosphere at 100,215 miles per hour.
Researchers scoured the seafloor off the coast of New Guinea in June 2023, extracting hundreds of small metal spherules during the expedition.